


Team Mate

by FranklyFrazzled



Category: Football RPF
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 05:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FranklyFrazzled/pseuds/FranklyFrazzled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steven only needs the ball at his feet and Xabi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Team Mate

**Author's Note:**

> Based off the song Team Mate by Kaiser Chiefs. Hidden a few lines of the song within- see if you can spot them!

This is a memory:

The air is damp with rain already spilled. There’s fog in the distance, making separation of grey sky, grey building, and grey ground almost impossible with its thickness. It’s quiet, strangely so for the time is mid afternoon but what is more surprising is that Steven is happy despite it all.

He’s aware there should be some melancholic feeling pestering in his soul or eerie weight in his heart. This weather was made for feeling bad, hiding cheery joy in the depth of the thick atmosphere. But he doesn’t feel anything like that. He feels light as the fog, like at any moment he’ll begin to float above the ground, lacking the weight necessary for gravity to capture and keep him down.

This is happiness. This is Stevie Gerrard, pure and unblemished. This is what it feels like to be eight years old and arrive early for the academy. It’s football. Football makes you light and makes you feel like anything is possible. When he grows up he will associate grey with joy and will never feel as though he needs color to brighten his day. He’ll never feel as though he needs color ever again.

Seven years later it will be another grey day when a boy named Xabi will enter his life. He’ll associate the feeling of lightness in the pit of his stomach with the game he is playing and not the person he is playing it with. He won’t learn about that until much later. Not until it’s too late.

 

This is not a memory. It is a catalog of events, feelings, and thoughts. Xabi doesn’t remember, he recalls:

• Blue, bright, swaying, vibrant  
• Calls of birds on the horizon, caw! caw! not chirp, chirp  
• Sinking, sand, heat, rolling  
• Thud, thud of the ball  
• Mikel, older, proud, heroic  
• Mikel, the other one, short, tan, laughing, tackle  
• Having to say goodbye to it all  
• Color fading away to grey

 

Steven:

There is little else he needs other than the ball at his feet. Food, drink, friends, sleep, work: all arbitrary. His life revolves around one thing and one thing only. Some people call him simple. He wishes they’d stop pitying him. He’s happier than they’d ever know or get the chance to experience. He doesn’t mind simple. Simple is the game and simple brings him joy.

He doesn’t have many friends off the field. Other boys don’t really seem to understand what he’s about, what he’s made of (football and blood, maybe some skin and tissue thrown in as well). Then he meets Xabi, the classic exchange student with a funny way of talking and even funnier hair. He doesn’t have any friends either because he’s new, just the game. It works.

 

Xabi:

• Trepidation, ho-lah!, fear  
• Anxiety, swelling, sweat, sweat, what?  
• Longing for friends left behind  
• Thud, thud of the ball  
• Steven, oh, okay

 

Steven:

He knows he’s going places. He understands that he has put too much heart and soul into what he does to be considered bad or even mediocre. He strives for exceptional and nothing is going to stand in his way. He has focus and drive. All the other boys whisper about him behind his back, saying he’s too full of himself. They don’t like it. They can fuck off.

He doesn’t need people. Doesn’t need to worry about what the other boys are saying about him when he leaves the room or what they think. He only needs the ball at his feet and his upcoming, bright future. That and Xabi. He’s the only one who understands and supports him unconditionally.

About a year after arriving, his hair and speech stop seeming so funny. Steven only needs him and football. It’s them against the world.

 

Xabi:

• Grit, devotion, spinning  
• Steven’s eyes have color, comfort  
• Thud, thud of the ball  
• Thud, thud of the heart  
• Twisting, breeze, blinding, yes  
• Nothing else matters, just this

 

Steven:

He doesn’t have time for parties, sex, and getting so drunk his insides feel like an exploding volcano for the rest of his life. He’s seventeen years old and the clock is ticking. This is the time he needs to really grab people’s attention if he ever wants to make something of himself.

So he doesn’t think twice when he begins to completely distance himself with the majority of the world and the people in it. Doesn’t think twice when he assumes Xabi is coming with him into seclusion. Best friends are supposed to do everything together; he forgets where his dreams begin and where Xabi ends.

He misses the hesitation on his friend’s face when he declines an invitation to Jamie’s party for the both of them. Misses his longing to say, “Can’t we go have fun for once?” See, the thing about Xabi is that he wants to be mindless, mingle and have fun. The only problem is that he wants to do those things with Steven too. They’re best friends. Eventually he’ll begin to want for something else. Want to get away from him, spend time apart, make other friends that aren’t so damn consuming and grey. But he doesn’t. He’s devoted to the man and his cause. He leaves the color he grew up with and that once made him so happy all behind. Gives it up for the person he cares for.

The problem with Steven is that he’s so focused on ensuring grey, grey happiness for his future that he doesn’t notice that he’s making the grey, grey happiness of his present miserable. He’s too focused on what will happen that he forgets nothing has.

 

Xabi:

• Perch, cold, limited  
• Distances- England to Spain, Steven to the goal, Steven to his goal, now and bliss  
• Blue, grey, color, lacking, please- just- please  
• “I believe in you, Steven. You’ll be one of the greats.”  
• Running, passing, grass, lonely  
• A football is not a friend

 

Steven:

And then it happens. It’s like nothing he has ever felt before. It’s the telephone conversation to make all telephone conversations that follow obsolete. He’s eight years old again and at risk of floating straight into the sun. This is Steven Gerrard after Liverpoool call to let him know that everything has paid off, that they’ve noticed his hard work and that they want him as theirs.

Xabi is the first person he thinks to tell. He shouts into the phone: “We’ve done it, mate! Just got to sign on the fucking dotted line now!” They make plans to meet at the bar they’ve never really been to before because athletics and alcohol rarely mix well and they pretend that they’re frequent guests to stave off the awkwardness.

Steven looks at him, his best (and only) friend and the feeling of weightlessness intensifies. He hasn’t even touched his first drink and he’s already ready to swing from the ceiling and confess eternal love for this boy. But his helium stomach is calmed by the morose look in Xabi’s eyes. It’s the one that had developed since they’d locked themselves away from the rest of their friends and peers but of course before now Steven had been too busy with himself to notice. Xabi looks like a vibrant flame that has been stifled. Like a brilliant painting that has been diluted and dulled.

He doesn’t know what to say. He just does.

 

Xabi:

• Bitter, happy, middle-ground, heavy  
• Tired, soft, surprise?  
• Resigned to this, too late to go back now  
• Grey, grey, grey  
• Tentative hands, making love, finally, oh-yes  
• This should be enough, love  
• Thud, thud of the headboard  
• Content, mellow, hold me tight  
• Nothing has changed, sorrow, intense

 

Steven:

He buys an apartment and Xabi moves in with him. Everything is exactly the same as before only now there is sex. Lots of it, all the time. Steven says it helps him focus better on the field and they they should have started this years ago. He makes their relationship more like a football strategy than an actual relationship. He doesn’t know anything else.

 

Xabi:

• Singing, red, burst  
• Anfield, watching, thud, thud Steven  
• Thousands of fans united, still alone  
• Apart, chasm, hunger, dizzying, want  
• “Is he worth it, tío?”  
• Venom, goal! goal! goal!  
• “He has to be. I’ve put too much of myself into this.”

 

Steven:

He’s established himself. England have come calling. He’s away more and more. Sometimes he forgets home isn’t the field or an ever changing hotel room. Sometimes he forgets there has only ever been one person who believes in him the same way he does himself, maybe even more. He’s blinded by the dream that finally became reality.

Being away so often is never hard. It’s his duty as a player. But after a while the lightness of happiness begins to fade away as he gets used to everything. He settles. He never thought it would happen. Never prepared himself for the moment he would get used to football and would need to find his thrills somewhere else. It’s not that he’s unhappy with what he has, just that there is something missing and he’s not quite sure what.

He comes home (the that apartment he rarely ever sees) and it’s empty. He makes his way through every room, taking his time to search for signs of life. But there are none. Xabi is gone. Steven suddenly feels heavier, like he’ll fall right through the floor and into the molten core of the Earth. Xabi is gone and he realizes for the first time that maybe while he was off chasing his own felicity Xabi might have wanted more in life than to just be by his side. It all happens too late. Steven doesn’t know how to adore, only be adored.

Grey, grey, grey. It has a new meaning now. In some silly interview they ask him what his favorite color is. He responds with soulful eyes straight into the camera, straight into the person who he hopes is watching: “I never cared for colors or variety. I wish that I had now, though.” There’s more to life than football, this he finds out too late.

 

Xabi:

• La playa, soaking, brilliance  
• Home, orange, gold, blue, purple, love, love, love  
• Pang, Steven, memories of grey, fondness, solitude, goodbye  
• You used to be my team mate, that’s the way it seemed  
• El mar, freedom, freshness, tumbling  
• I’m sorry, calm, now, here  
• They had no faith in you, I had faith in you.  
• I always will.


End file.
